Allocation Pre-production planning

Pre- production planning that I did: Half of Treatment, Scheduling and alignment, Risk Assessment, Audio Assests, Budget, Considerations, Legal and Ethical, Voice release form, Analysis on feedback, Evidence of pictures, Swot Analysis.

Pre-production planning that Simona did: Other half of Treatment, Rushes log, Audience Feedback, Conducting Recce's, Funding, Launch Date, Production Schedule, Key Personnel list, Task allocation 1-5, Production log 1-5, Running Order, Regulatory Bodies.

My side and how I liaised with my partner

My part of the radio drama is where Avery is bored at home so she decides to watch a youtube video and stumbles upon a video about the Dark Web. After watching the video she is intrigued and wants to find out how to get into the dark web, so she searches a video online again and follows a tutorial to get onto the surface of the dark web. 

Khairun helped me with recoding some of the dialogues as she was the narrator of the radio drama. This part was tedious as we had to record and review as Khairun sounded mono toned while narrating at times. The recordings were done in GarageBand. She had written the dialogue for Dark Secrets for me to play the character Avery as well. 

While she was recording her voiceovers I was looking for diegetic and non diegetic sounds to put in our radio drama. She then went onto to finding music for the radio drama to use throughout the film making sure that it is copyright free. 

We helped each other on editing 'Dark Secrets' She added music and while I added foley sounds. We both spent a long amount of time editing this to make sure that it meets the brief and a radio dramas conventions. Khairun and I then re watched the radio drama as if we do not know what is going on to see if it is clear to the audience what the radio drama is about. We tried our best to make the radio drama as interesting as possible from the storyline to the editing. However, while recording our dialogues we had lots of unexpected issues with the file of our recordings, the file would either not save or be corrupt. This meant that we had to help each other re-record our dialogues again. I then helped her with fixing the volume issues as it was uneven at times but it proved to be unsuccessful. 

Khairun also assisted me in pre production work.  

U16 radio dark secrets clip

First part of dark secrets final radio drama

audience Feedback

The feedback we will act on 

Afsarah, Areeba, and Zayna told us a few things we should work on. They told us to make the scene more consistent in sound as they found it infuriating that the volume kept changing. We acted upon this by deleting the first clip we repeat in the first draft. We are also going to delete and replace some clips where it's really quiet. 

Afsarah also told us that I should be more enthusiastic and give more emotion in my voice acting, so we will redo those parts. E.g. when Avery fears Jaden chasing her, I am supposed to be threatened and scared. 

We will also try to make it seem less scripted to make it more realistic. And we will try to make the plot clearer to understand the audience. As even though the scenes are in order it is a little confusing. And then in the final edit, we will take out all the bloopers and replace the dialogues that we need to in order to finish Dark Secrets. 

The feedback we will not act on 

Afsarah told us to re-record our lines in a soundproof room, but not only do we not have the time for that but also, we do not have a soundproof room in school. 

Afsarah also told us to change Avery's character to seem more interesting by giving her more background story. However, we cannot act on this feedback as we must make our radio drama no more or less than 5 minutes and 30 seconds. 

Afsarah said again that the radio drama sounds fuzzy. But I kept the edit that way to make it seem like she is really at home. To make it more realistic. 

Zayna told us that we should make the advert a little shorter as it was getting boring without any music. We will be adding music, but we will not be able to shorten the radio drama as again our radio drama can be no more or less than 5 minutes and 30 seconds. 

Evaluation

Rushes log

Foley sounds

Production Journey

I worked on Dark Secrets with Khairun. It was our first time working with GarageBand. There were a lot of lines, however fortunately since it is a radio drama i  did not have to memorise anything. Khairun was in charge of writing the script, after she was done she let me see it and we tweaked a few things. While recording it was hard to be serious, since we were trying out best to voice act. We made mistakes and laughed. However we still managed to get all of our recording done. We did our rushes log then we deleted any unwanted recordings. Then after we recorded all the characters bits, we started to edit them on GarageBand. We started off by matching the voice so it would look like Avery wasn't talking to her self but having a conversation. We then placed the foley sounds in the right places. Then we saved it. However there were issues with saving sometimes in GarageBand so we would have to re-record what we needed again. 

 

Then we gathered audience feedback, some said the voice's wont clear or we needed more emotion. So me and Khairun re-recorded a lot of the lines again and tried harder this time for it to sound more believable. I did happen to be a bit sick for the beginning half of the recording so it sounded a bit mumbled, but it was too late to change it since we needed to hurry up and edit everything then post it to blogger. 

We then had to add more to our drama since it wasn't long enough. And because of this we had to go into GarageBand again and match up the recordings. 

One of the scenes we added was to make it longer is, where i was pretending to be an American youtuber. For this i had to put on an accent, for it to seem more believable. I also added a sponsor. And we made it so when  Avery was watching the video the audience could also hear the video. We also added spooky background music to it, to intrigue the viewer. We made the recording quieter and added keyboard foley sounds. When she is typing foley sound is used. This made it feel more real that Avery was watching a Youtube video. 

We then needed a voice for another character - the police officer. We asked miss Lowndes if she would be willing to do it, and she agreed to. When she recorded it when talking to Avery on the phone we wanted the voice to be clearer than when she was talking to Jaden. When she was near Jaden and she was speaking we added echoes so it seemed like she was using her walky-talky speaker. 

After all that our recordings was done we went into final cut pro to edit our recordings. We imported all the recordings, sound effects and music we needed. We then added a picture from google and text saying the title "Dark Secrets" to play throughout the whole radio drama. Since this is supposed to be an original piece of work, we had to use copyright free music. So to get our copyright free music, we went into google and searched Youtube to MP3 converter. Then we went to YouTube and searched copyright free background music etc. And then copied the link and added to the Youtube to mp3 converter, then downloaded it. And added it to our recording on final cut pro. Background music was important to not only set the mood but to get the audience engaged as well. Without music it would be a pretty boring. As it isn't a visual media. There would be no suspense, or anything like that, which would make is less intriguing to the audience. Which might make them not want to finish listening to the whole radio drama. Which could also potentially make them not want to watch the other episodes that come out as well, as this is the first episode that sets the expectations and represents how the other episodes will be like.

U 16 Storage, compression and file size

Storage

Flash Drive - A USB flash drive consists of a flash memory data storage device integrated with a USB interface. USB Flash Drives are typically removable and rewritable. It can be attached to a keychain. When you plug a USB Flash Drive into your computer USB port, the computer recognises it as a mass storage device and assigns it a drive letter.

Hard drive – A hard drive is a piece of hardware used to store digital content and data on computers. Every computer has an internal hard drive, but you can also get external hard drives that can be used to expand the storage of a computer.

SSD – An SSD (Solid-State Drive) is a newer and advanced form of a hard drive that works as a storage device in computers. With no moving parts, SSDs access and deliver data more quickly than traditional drives.

Cloud – Cloud computing means storing and accessing data and programs over the internet instead of your computer’s hard drive. (The PCMAG Encyclopaedia defines it succinctly as “hardware and software services from a prover on the internet.”) Ultimately, the “cloud” is just a metaphor for the internet.

Compression

DRC – A new (dynamic rang compression) DRC tag can now used to tag and enhance the volume of a certain sounds in your audio file. The sounds in an audio file range from softer sounds to louder, depending on the text, the language and the voice.

Downwards/Upwards – Downwards compression treats the signal only when it goes above the threshold, by reducing the volume or “pushing it down” On the other hand, upwards compression only affects audio signals below the threshold, by increasing the volume and pushing everything up.

Size VS Quality

Lossy – Lossy compression means that the image size is reduced while some data from the original image file is eliminated.

Lossless – A lossless file, the FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) is compressed to nearly half the size of an uncompressed WAV or AIFF of equivalent sample rate, but there should be no “loss” in terms of how it sounds. FLAC flies can also provide a resolution of up to 32-bit, 96kHz, so better than CD quality.

Bit rate – Bit rate refers to the amount of audio bits transferred at a given time. It is usually measured in kilobits per second (kbps) The higher the bitrate, the larger the audio file.

Files size – File size is the measurement of space a file takes up on a storage medium, such as a computer hard drive or ad server. Also, the resolution of your image has nothing to do with its file size. However, the file size of the image on the left is 630% larger. This makes a big difference in a page load speed, especially when using larger dimension images and when using multiple images on a page.

Audience Feedback on first draft

Feedback on first draft: The students i told to give me feedback was Afsarah, Zayna and Areeba.

The questions i asked were: 

Is our voices loud enough?

What do you think about the radio drama?

Is there anything else that we can add to the radio drama?

Do you understand what the radio drama is about, if so which part and why?

What do you think about the characters in the radio drama?

Afsarah said that our voices were alright but there are times where our voices would go softer or louder, which would be annoying since the audience would need to keep changing the volume and it would get frustrating. She also said that it was fuzzy and that it sounds like white noise making the audio unclear. She suggested that we should have more enthusiasm in our words and that the recording should be done in a soundproof room, also check if there is audio by doing a soundcheck. Afsarah said that the characters were quite bland at least something to remember that they’re an actual person. She thinks more reactions are needed to make it more believable, for example when you question certain things in your mind It makes more sense but if you just say it, it feels and looks unbelievable that you’re saying something. I think questioning things whilst “thinking” of something gives you a better advantage to make it believable.

Areeba said that she could understand the radio show and what it is about. The voices in the first half was really quiet and she needed to put her phone next to her ear to hear it, but in the second half the voices was really loud so she said that it should be the same volume throughout the whole radio drama. That it should be at a moderate level of volume unless it needs to be louder or quieter for a particular reason. She also agreed with Afsarah by saying that even though Simona's acting wasn't bad , but she should put emotion into her words since it's a radio drama the audience cannot see the actors/characters expression because it's only sound with no other visual aspects.

Zayna also talked about the volume problems. Zayna basically said the same thing as Afsarah and Areeba about Simona's acting and also that everything sounded out of place because even though she kind of understood the story it was still a little bit confusing and she said everything is a bit monotone and boring. She said she struggled watching all of it because there was nothing interesting for her to carry on with.